A highly decorated Navy SEAL shares his personal stories of training and combat missions in Vietnam and beyond, revealing what it means to fight for your country."Fractions of a second in time. What amazing violence can be meted out in the blink of an eye."In the mid-nineteen sixties, Harry Constance made a life-altering journey that led him out of Texas and into the jungles of Vietnam. As a young naval officer, he went from UDT training to the U.S...

“The story of Sergeant Major Maurice Jacques is the story of a true warrior. With close to fifty months’ combat in Korea and Vietnam, he’s one of that rare breed, men who have looked the Devil in the eye—for a long time—and never blinked!”**—**LtCol. Oliver North, USMC (Ret.)COMBAT AND DEATH, SACRIFICE AND HONORMaurice Jacques served for thirty years with the U.S. Marine Corps, nearly six of them in combat. As an accomplished infantryman, parachutist, recon...

This is the report of an American Paratrooper, Infantry, boots on the ground, in Viet Nam in the mid 1960s. It is not a romanticized, sanitized, fantasized Hollywood version of ground combat. It is a description of life on the ground for your military grandfathers, fathers, uncles and brothers. When they returned from Viet Nam, this is not what they talked about. It was too painful, too raw, too uncivilized and too inhuman. The accumulated fear and pain of a full years tour of duty was ove...

After spending a year in Germany as a security guard with the 50th Ordnance Company, Curtis Gay went to Viet Nam as a Private First Class. Six months later he was a Sergeant in the 25th Infantry Division and experienced some of the most intense fighting of the war. This book is his story.Curtis spent a year as a Drill Sergeant at Fort Dix, New Jersey before leaving the Army in 1968. After a long career in the electrical industry, he is retired and lives in Durham, North Carolina wi...

It was 1968 and Robert Hartley was on his first combat mission in Vietnam as copilot of a helicopter gunship. As he and his platoon leader flew over the A Shau Valley, a Chinook helicopter engulfed in flames suddenly came into view. Hartley noticed tiny black smoking objects exiting the tail ramp of the aircraft. Seconds later, he realized those objects were men escaping the flames and plunging to their deaths. It was in that moment that he silently wondered, How the hell did I get here?

Charles Gadd served in Vietnam in late 1967 and 1968 and had experiences very similar to what most enlisted men endured. He describes the mud, blood, leeches, loss of friends, and low morale due to constant harassment by guerrillas. The author, a squad leader with the 101st Airborne, was wounded twice and saw nearly constant action in the Central Highlands. This memoir is a vivid and accurate description of the Vietnam War.*“I must explain that this story is writte...

AMBUSH VALLEYI Corps, Vietnam, 1967the Story of a Marine Infantry Battalion's Battle for SurvivalEric HammelIn the summer of 1967, the Marines in I Corps, South Vietnams northernmost military region, were doing eveything they could to lighten the pressure on the besieged Con Thien Combat Base.Still fresh after months of relatively light action around Khe Sanh, the 3d Battalion, 26th Marines, was sent to the Con Thien region to secure the combat basess endangered main supply route. On Septembe...

It used to be said that the night belonged to Charlie. But that wasn't true where SEALs patrolled. For six months in 1970, fourteen men in Juliett Platoon of the Navy's SEAL Team One--incuding the author--carried out over a hundred missions in the Mekong Delta without a single platoon fatality. Their primary mission: kidnap enemy soldiers--alive--for interrogation.

In mid-December 1968, after recovering from wounds susatined in a murderous mission, Gary Linderer returned to Phu Bai to comlpete his tour of duty as a LRP. His job was to find the enmy, observe him, or kill him--all the while behind enemy lines, where success could be as dangerous as discovery.

WHEN YOU'RE IN THE DEATH BUSINESS,EACH DAWN COULD BE YOUR LAST.Raw, straightforward, and powerful, Ed Kugler's account of his two years as a Marine scout-sniper in Vietnam vividly captures his experiences there--the good, the bad, and the ugly. After enlisting in the Marines at seventeen, then being wounded in Santo Domingo during the Dominican crisis, Kugler arrived in Vietnam in early 1966.As a new sniper with the 4th Marines, Kugler picked up bush skills while att...

The memoir of a man who spent most of his career facing death.For UDT/SEAL team member Gary R. Smith, just being part of an elite military organization wasn’t enough—he had to be in the thick of the action. Because in bloody, violent Vietnam he learned there’s no stronger bond than the one forged in the gut-wrenching chaos of combat. During ambushes, PRU combat patrols, and extractions from hot LZs, Smith depended on the courage and sacrifice of his fellow SEALs, w...

In 1966, the Marine Corps introduced a bold, new concept to the battlefield. Little did the designers of that concept realize that it would change the way wars are fought, and the Corps, from that day forward.One of the most influential strategies of the Vietnam War, the Stingray Patrol comprised seven to ten marines in small teams, inserted by chopper deep in enemy territory. Surrounded on all sides by North Vietnamese Army troops and Viet Cong guerillas, these small, high-effecti...